There's no diabolical motives on the spyware product team either. Microsoft Anti-Spyware will not be used to 'scare' people away from open source software, now or in the future. Remember that Microsoft acquired this product less than a month ago and has changed very little other than branding for the beta. winPcap and WinVNC (and even, embarrassingly enough, a few signed Microsoft OS binaries) were all detected as spyware before Microsoft bought the company. You refer to 'scary warnings' and yet you don't point out that the default action on those items is 'ignore' and not 'remove' as it is for most truly malicious spyware. Talk about FUD.
Actually, the default action in the drop-down list for each item (on my system) was "Remove", FUD indeed.
Take my post for what it was meant as...a paranoid thought-excercise that points out the possible use of a bundled product that has the functionality that this one does. I have lesser reservations about Ad-Aware and Spybot for the same reasons (the fact that you don't have to pay for them via an OS license or straight purchase offsets those fears somewhat).
Here's what I think about what Microsoft *should* do:
Make it more difficult for spyware to be installed (kudos for SP2 and the firewall, just keep going with that)
Make signed applications easier to create and make signatures easy to revoke
Make a task manager that lets users see what's running (along with a little bit of info) and actually kill stuff that shouldn't be running. "DLLHOST.EXE" isn't exactly informative
That would do a lot towards eliminating spyware and malware...I won't even get into the list of things that could be changed in IE.
I don't hate Microsoft...I use their Operating Systems, and have for about 20 years...however, when I see something that's this useful to average people, and this potentially useful to managing people's perception about other software products, I speak up.
I hope I'm wrong, but if I'm not, I won't be too surprised.
what I wouldn't give for a network for real computer geeks. Some Linux shows, watching people write code and secure systems. Fun for all ages! But they probably won't create a show for 5 people to watch. Oh well.
Sure they will, they'll just air it as a 'torrent stream instead of a commercial broadcast. When do you want to begin production of episode 1?
This is an example of a shrewd move on Microsoft's part, and it has very little to do with wanting to control the AV market.
One nugget of info can be gleaned by going through the process of installing their Spyware removal software. They mention that you have a chance to verify your Microsoft Software is genuine, and they *also* mention that in the future doing so may be *required*.
Think about that for a second. How many illegal copies of Windows are out there? How much money does Microsoft *not* make on those copies of Windows? They discovered a must-have software product (that I expect they won't charge for, other than the price of a copy of Windows if you're running unlicensed) that they can use to solve most of their piracy woes. It's clever, but I suppose it's fair.
The diabolical part is that once you install their Spyware removal tool, they have a perfect way to scare the clueless into removing software that they (Microsoft) don't especially like. When I ran it the first time, it identified winPcap and WinVNC (the *client*, for crying out loud!) as spyware and gave me scary warnings about wanting to remove them. It's only a matter of time before OpenOffice makes the list, and a lot of people will either accept the defaults and delete whatever Microsoft Tells them to, or will be unsure about how safe it is to run a given piece of software and reluctantly delete it.
There are a few companies I trust to give me a decent list of spyware apps to detect, and Microsoft isn't one of them. They don't want to control the AV market or the Spyware market, they want to decide for you about *any* programs you install on your PC.
It's not that the new hardware plays by the rules that's the issue, here...it's that along with the new player comes new DVD media that won't play on anything but the new hardware anymore. You're looking at it from the wrong end. The whole things is about what they can't do going forward from a certain point. That needn't mean that old players should not work by default in the future.
I shouldn't have to spend money to buy a new TV, DVD player, etc for any reason other than me *wanting* to support a new format for some reason. That's like the FCC trying to say "sorry, your computer is too old, you're not allowed on the internet unless you buy a new one that allows us to keep you from accessing particular content".
If future movies will only play on the new machines, and the hordes of people that just bought them were able to afford them after waiting and waiting and waiting for the price to drop, how likely is it that they will all shell out for a brand-new DVD player that they *have* to buy because corporate bastards changed something (vs. screaming about how unfair it is and dragging their feet)?
My guess is that the studios will come out with the newly-encoded media, the tens of millions of people that can't play it will bitch very loudly, and those responsible will look extremely stupid. Forget DRM, most people (non-geeks) don't care about that. The problem is gold-digging.
DVD players are so cheap and penetration is so high that you can only make money on content and on the discs themselves. HP and Phillips evidently decided they don't like that and can cloak a cheap cash-grab (how expensive is it for them to engineer this, do you think) in "DRM clothing".
Why else would two hardware companies spend money to re-engineer things in a way that obsoletes existing equipment?
1. Create new incompatible standard
2. Sell hardware that solves the "problem"
3. Profit
Sit back and watch the fur fly...this is going to be entertaining (well, not for HP and Phillips).
I have four children ranging in age from ten years to 14 months. I spoke harshly in this case, and no, I didn't *seriously* mean that they should be slapped, but that statement conveyed the appropriate level of feeling.
I suppose, considering the level of maturity these kids displayed, that spanking them would be a reasonable way to get them to admit that they knew right from wrong.
No, I'm agnostic...God is a concept to me, not a person or being. I do, however believe in respecting other people's property and in taking responsibility for your actions. Part of my anger is towards the kids for doing what they did, and part of it is towards the lawyers who are going to attempt to put the blame on video game publishers.
How about placing the blame where it belongs: squarely on the shoulders of the young idiots spray painting crap.
Ask those 12-to-14 year olds "Did you know that spray-painting objects that don't belong to you was wrong?" or "Did you know that spray painting objects that don't belong to you is illegal?" and see how many answer "no". Then slap the ones that answer "no" until they tell the truth and be done with it.
They were wrong, they damn well knew they were wrong, and they don't want to get into trouble or take responsibility for what they did, so they're blaming somebody else to see if they can slide.
But that's a matter for the window manager - would be nice if that gets implemented in metacity or kwin or sawfish, or whatever floats your boat. But just because some functionality is missing in the WM, doesn't mean you should implement it in the wrong place - the applications.
True, if you're talking about an application that only runs on (or is only primarily used on) Linux-ish systems. There, you're talking about a user base that picks and chooses window managers.
One of the things about Windows that doesn't completely suck is that you can more or less expect an application to be presented in one particular way. Click on a shortcut and a window opens up with an application in it. GIMP (and numerous other GNU apps) follow a different design philosophy, but that doesn't mean that un-Windowsness is always a good thing, or that all of the people who use your app are going to like it.
One of the things that put me off of using GIMP at first was the unfamiliar feel. I've used a few different apps for raster-based image munging and (probably because they were made for MS-based systems), they used a single mainwindow, etc. Lots of folks would just look, say "what the hell is this crap?" and call it quits (especially after their first and second bouts with the file dialog).
I'd say making the open file dialog more usable and giving an MDI option would be a big boost to getting newbies who don't know (or care to know) about GNU/Linux to give GIMP a serious try.
Interesting...you get none of the redundancy or preformance benefits of, say RAID-5, but growability seems to be your only real-time concern.
You might consider RAID-5 for the physical disks in the data pack with concat on top of that (if it's possible). Then you have hot-swappable redundant data storage that you can grow as you please (albeit 3+ disks at a time). Still hybrid, but trading some space for better availability. Done this way (if it's even possible), dropping a physical disk won't kill your data pack.
In a RAID setup where you're hoping to have some kind of redundancy, shouldn't 4 x 200 equal 600 or 400?
losing a single 200GB disk in that setup means that you most likely say goodbye to 734GB of data, rather than giving said disk a proper burial and replacing it.
You missed this post, I think (I don't think the Oxfor English Dictionary is an American publication)... read me
also...we don't insist on using "spelled" (or "spilled, for that matter)...our english teachers do. I used to piss mine off because I prefer "theatre" over "theater", but aside from that, I toed the line like everybody else.
This is a pretty decent pedantic argument thread, though...keep up the good work, everybody [makes note to kill self]...
To echo the post you're replying to...you know that how, exactly? Assuming you have some personal knowledge, have you notified the authors of the open source tools about the piracy?
There are two possible scenarios here...one, you don't know anything other than what you've heard, or two, you know and just don't care that the copyright owners are getting screwed over.
Exactly right...it's the way that various people evaluate "clear" that causes the problem. A justice can argue (against the guidance passed down from our founding fathers) that rather than interpreting the law in the spirit in which it was written, they'll look at it and decide that it should mean something else.
What's *supposed* to happen is that when the law doesn't fit society neatly anymore, we pass a constitutional amendment or revise the existing law. The meaning of the law is *supposed* to be very clear. Not "clear to wise judges and lawyers", but "clear to the average person", and not changing, but static.
The judge's job is to look at the facts of a case when there is a question as to which side of a clearly expressed law a given action falls and make a determination. Like a line judge in tennis or volleyball. It's in or it's out...you don't decide that the line is in a different place because the players are younger, if the boundaries of the metaphorical court (or the actual court, I guess) don't work, you paint a new line.
the question becomes why someone would decide to grab an equivalent name in another registry two years later and not immediately.
Maybe he *wanted* to register the unavailable-but-not-in-use itunes.com, but had to settle for itunes.co.uk? It's not a tough name to come up with: itunes = internet tunes. I'm willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. Looks like he's just a potentially lucky bastard and Apple doesn't want to cough up the serious cash that the domain will likely cost.
I didn't see that the list was from spamcop but I still would not allow this program to be installed on any of my machines.
Okay, but it's not like they're forcing the install on you.
However, I also have my email filters set up good enough that I get maybe one or two spam messages a week so I am not really plagued by the problem to the point that it angers me.
If your mail filters are running on the senders' machines, then I can see what you mean, short of that, the bastards are wasting my internet!
Filters are great, but why are they necessary? Shouldn't I be able to say "don't send me anything unless I already told you you could", and feel that it meant more than reciting a random nursery rhyme? You're filtering the messages, but only *after thay've taken up bandwidth, server space and resources, and processing time on your local PC. That blows.
Looking at the stats for November (postini.com), I see that about 88% of all email sent in that month was spam/UCE/phishing/crap. To help minimize that, would I look the other way over a few well-directed DDOSes? Probably.
If you're not mad about it yet, it's probably about time that you were.
Actually, if you look at the large-sized photograph you will notice that the bulb of the one that is near the flash is actually a bit to the left of the flash location. If the flash wasn't at sea, then it struck nothing at all.
That, and the fact that the inspection of the light doesn't support the "exploding light bulb" theory.
That's not off-topic. At least not the subject line. Actually, after reading what everybody was pretty sure it *wasn't*, that's all I could come up with.
To me, it looks like the bright spot is in the water, rather than on the light pole, which would make more sense, considering that the light pole was apparently not damaged and that flash looks like it had enough energy in it to at least make a scorch mark.
It wasn't a meteor, it wasn't lightning, so what else could make a straight line from ocean to sky and make a bright spot in the water?
Space-based (or just high-altitude) laser feels about right to me.
Slashdot Mirror
So, you said that, why, exactly?
Just confused as to why you're grumpy, here...
Ahh...I can feel the karma leaving my body...
Actually, the default action in the drop-down list for each item (on my system) was "Remove", FUD indeed.
Take my post for what it was meant as...a paranoid thought-excercise that points out the possible use of a bundled product that has the functionality that this one does. I have lesser reservations about Ad-Aware and Spybot for the same reasons (the fact that you don't have to pay for them via an OS license or straight purchase offsets those fears somewhat).
Here's what I think about what Microsoft *should* do:
That would do a lot towards eliminating spyware and malware...I won't even get into the list of things that could be changed in IE.
I don't hate Microsoft...I use their Operating Systems, and have for about 20 years...however, when I see something that's this useful to average people, and this potentially useful to managing people's perception about other software products, I speak up.
I hope I'm wrong, but if I'm not, I won't be too surprised.
Sure they will, they'll just air it as a 'torrent stream instead of a commercial broadcast. When do you want to begin production of episode 1?
One nugget of info can be gleaned by going through the process of installing their Spyware removal software. They mention that you have a chance to verify your Microsoft Software is genuine, and they *also* mention that in the future doing so may be *required*.
Think about that for a second. How many illegal copies of Windows are out there? How much money does Microsoft *not* make on those copies of Windows? They discovered a must-have software product (that I expect they won't charge for, other than the price of a copy of Windows if you're running unlicensed) that they can use to solve most of their piracy woes. It's clever, but I suppose it's fair.
The diabolical part is that once you install their Spyware removal tool, they have a perfect way to scare the clueless into removing software that they (Microsoft) don't especially like. When I ran it the first time, it identified winPcap and WinVNC (the *client*, for crying out loud!) as spyware and gave me scary warnings about wanting to remove them. It's only a matter of time before OpenOffice makes the list, and a lot of people will either accept the defaults and delete whatever Microsoft Tells them to, or will be unsure about how safe it is to run a given piece of software and reluctantly delete it.
There are a few companies I trust to give me a decent list of spyware apps to detect, and Microsoft isn't one of them. They don't want to control the AV market or the Spyware market, they want to decide for you about *any* programs you install on your PC.
I shouldn't have to spend money to buy a new TV, DVD player, etc for any reason other than me *wanting* to support a new format for some reason. That's like the FCC trying to say "sorry, your computer is too old, you're not allowed on the internet unless you buy a new one that allows us to keep you from accessing particular content".
If future movies will only play on the new machines, and the hordes of people that just bought them were able to afford them after waiting and waiting and waiting for the price to drop, how likely is it that they will all shell out for a brand-new DVD player that they *have* to buy because corporate bastards changed something (vs. screaming about how unfair it is and dragging their feet)?
My guess is that the studios will come out with the newly-encoded media, the tens of millions of people that can't play it will bitch very loudly, and those responsible will look extremely stupid. Forget DRM, most people (non-geeks) don't care about that. The problem is gold-digging.
DVD players are so cheap and penetration is so high that you can only make money on content and on the discs themselves. HP and Phillips evidently decided they don't like that and can cloak a cheap cash-grab (how expensive is it for them to engineer this, do you think) in "DRM clothing".
Why else would two hardware companies spend money to re-engineer things in a way that obsoletes existing equipment?
1. Create new incompatible standard
2. Sell hardware that solves the "problem"
3. Profit
Sit back and watch the fur fly...this is going to be entertaining (well, not for HP and Phillips).
I suppose, considering the level of maturity these kids displayed, that spanking them would be a reasonable way to get them to admit that they knew right from wrong.
No, I'm agnostic...God is a concept to me, not a person or being. I do, however believe in respecting other people's property and in taking responsibility for your actions. Part of my anger is towards the kids for doing what they did, and part of it is towards the lawyers who are going to attempt to put the blame on video game publishers.
Ask those 12-to-14 year olds "Did you know that spray-painting objects that don't belong to you was wrong?" or "Did you know that spray painting objects that don't belong to you is illegal?" and see how many answer "no". Then slap the ones that answer "no" until they tell the truth and be done with it.
They were wrong, they damn well knew they were wrong, and they don't want to get into trouble or take responsibility for what they did, so they're blaming somebody else to see if they can slide.
Pathetic.
To one-up Photoshop?
True, if you're talking about an application that only runs on (or is only primarily used on) Linux-ish systems. There, you're talking about a user base that picks and chooses window managers.
One of the things about Windows that doesn't completely suck is that you can more or less expect an application to be presented in one particular way. Click on a shortcut and a window opens up with an application in it. GIMP (and numerous other GNU apps) follow a different design philosophy, but that doesn't mean that un-Windowsness is always a good thing, or that all of the people who use your app are going to like it.
One of the things that put me off of using GIMP at first was the unfamiliar feel. I've used a few different apps for raster-based image munging and (probably because they were made for MS-based systems), they used a single mainwindow, etc. Lots of folks would just look, say "what the hell is this crap?" and call it quits (especially after their first and second bouts with the file dialog).
I'd say making the open file dialog more usable and giving an MDI option would be a big boost to getting newbies who don't know (or care to know) about GNU/Linux to give GIMP a serious try.
You might consider RAID-5 for the physical disks in the data pack with concat on top of that (if it's possible). Then you have hot-swappable redundant data storage that you can grow as you please (albeit 3+ disks at a time). Still hybrid, but trading some space for better availability. Done this way (if it's even possible), dropping a physical disk won't kill your data pack.
losing a single 200GB disk in that setup means that you most likely say goodbye to 734GB of data, rather than giving said disk a proper burial and replacing it.
Yeah, but if I added that (or "nudge, nudge...wink, wink...say no more"), I would have missed all of the "flamebait" mods ;)
Heem...I'm sure the girl at the front desk has had a trojan or two in her...
also...we don't insist on using "spelled" (or "spilled, for that matter)...our english teachers do. I used to piss mine off because I prefer "theatre" over "theater", but aside from that, I toed the line like everybody else.
This is a pretty decent pedantic argument thread, though...keep up the good work, everybody [makes note to kill self]...
There are two possible scenarios here...one, you don't know anything other than what you've heard, or two, you know and just don't care that the copyright owners are getting screwed over.
What's *supposed* to happen is that when the law doesn't fit society neatly anymore, we pass a constitutional amendment or revise the existing law. The meaning of the law is *supposed* to be very clear. Not "clear to wise judges and lawyers", but "clear to the average person", and not changing, but static.
The judge's job is to look at the facts of a case when there is a question as to which side of a clearly expressed law a given action falls and make a determination. Like a line judge in tennis or volleyball. It's in or it's out...you don't decide that the line is in a different place because the players are younger, if the boundaries of the metaphorical court (or the actual court, I guess) don't work, you paint a new line.
Difficulty: Assume for a minute that you are aware that "a grip" means "a shitload of money" when it is used as it was in this instance.
the question becomes why someone would decide to grab an equivalent name in another registry two years later and not immediately.
Maybe he *wanted* to register the unavailable-but-not-in-use itunes.com, but had to settle for itunes.co.uk? It's not a tough name to come up with: itunes = internet tunes. I'm willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. Looks like he's just a potentially lucky bastard and Apple doesn't want to cough up the serious cash that the domain will likely cost.
I didn't see that the list was from spamcop but I still would not allow this program to be installed on any of my machines.
Okay, but it's not like they're forcing the install on you.
However, I also have my email filters set up good enough that I get maybe one or two spam messages a week so I am not really plagued by the problem to the point that it angers me.
If your mail filters are running on the senders' machines, then I can see what you mean, short of that, the bastards are wasting my internet!
Filters are great, but why are they necessary? Shouldn't I be able to say "don't send me anything unless I already told you you could", and feel that it meant more than reciting a random nursery rhyme? You're filtering the messages, but only *after thay've taken up bandwidth, server space and resources, and processing time on your local PC. That blows.
Looking at the stats for November (postini.com), I see that about 88% of all email sent in that month was spam/UCE/phishing/crap. To help minimize that, would I look the other way over a few well-directed DDOSes? Probably.
If you're not mad about it yet, it's probably about time that you were.
That, and the fact that the inspection of the light doesn't support the "exploding light bulb" theory.
To me, it looks like the bright spot is in the water, rather than on the light pole, which would make more sense, considering that the light pole was apparently not damaged and that flash looks like it had enough energy in it to at least make a scorch mark.
It wasn't a meteor, it wasn't lightning, so what else could make a straight line from ocean to sky and make a bright spot in the water?
Space-based (or just high-altitude) laser feels about right to me.
Yeah, because licensing worked wonders for keeping bad drivers off the highways...oh, wait...